


Ghosts in the Machine

by Paper0wl



Series: Rod and Shield [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Computer Hacking, Gen, government ninjas, now you see it now you don't, smoke and mirrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 22:32:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1619345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper0wl/pseuds/Paper0wl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Director Fury doesn't take kindly to trickster archangels making his security look superfluous. </p>
<p>SHIELD will never be the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts in the Machine

“Hey, Dr. Badass! Sorry to interrupt the researching, but I got a bit of an urgent project for you.” 

“You pay me to play with all the best toys. You got me chasing leads that make ghosts look solid and you know how I love a good challenge. Any project of yours is guaranteed to be pretty sweet. What’s on agenda today, Lady Lux? Your wish is my command,” Ash said with a grin. 

Kyria didn’t answer the grin. 

“Hey boss-lady. What’s the problem?” 

“I just met with Director Fury,” she said in a strained voice. 

***

_A pile of papers plopped down onto the desk. Fury jabbed a finger down at them. “Our security has been compromised. Dress it up in whatever goddamn clothes you want, someone fucking_ waltzed _past SHIELD security on a SHIELD base to fucking_ graffiti _a SHIELD agent’s personal quarters.”_

_“It was a joke,” she said, trying not to wince. Trust Gabriel to muck things up just because he could._

_Fury’s glare intensified. “A joke,” he repeated in barely restrained fury. “This Loki can breach our defenses as a joke.”_

_She did wince that time. “Yes, sir.”_

***

“What’s his problem this time?” 

Kyria struggled to unclench her jaw. “NINJAT. All of NINJAT. He wants it gone.” 

***

_“You led me to believe those sorts of things were few and far between,” Fury accused. “Instead we have SHIELD secrets published as fiction. Not to mention your secretary only works for you because she sold her_ soul _to someone you_ outrank. _She’s not even the only Ninja on the list of making carnie thieves and Russian agents look inconsequential. But I could have dealt with that. I could’ve._

_“But now I’ve got a motherfucking security breach that I can’t explain or prevent by any goddamn reasonable means. Which means we have a problem, Agent Lux. I can’t have holes in my security for someone else to come along and exploit. NINJAT has to go.”_

_She almost choked on her tongue. “That department was_ your _idea!”_

_“And now it’s a liability. I want NINJAT gone like it never existed. I don’t want a fucking trail for anyone to trace back to any of that supernatural shit to use against us. Make it disappear, Lux. I want nothing left to find.”_

_“You can’t be asking me to cut it loose! You – oh. You mean bury it deep.” That made more sense. Fury wouldn’t countenance sticking his head in the sand._

_He gave one sparse nod. “Burn whatever you can’t bury.”_

***

“Gone?” Ash sputtered. “But all the work we put into it! What about all the hunters – " 

Kyria smirked finally. “That was rather my reaction too.” 

It was her smile that clued the computer genius in. “He wants the _evidence_ gone. That’s more like the smoke and mirrors I expected. NINJAT’s going underground then?” 

“All of it,” Kyria said with a sigh. “Contacts, assets, cases, the whole department and every line in its paper trail.” 

Ash whistled. “You don’t place small orders. That’s what I like about you. Challenges.” 

She snorted before she could stop herself. 

***

_“That’s a lot of bookkeeping, Director,” Kyria said, vaguely appalled at the magnitude of erasing NINJAT._

_“It’s a good thing you’re capable of incredible feats of computer programming then,” he said pointedly._

_Kyria winced at that. Being a Light-bringer gave her a deft touch with electronics when necessary. “I’m not comfortable doing that,” she began._

_Fury cut her off with a look. “And I’m not comfortable with weaknesses in my agency. You will do whatever is required to get the job done. Whether that means your ex-MIT hacker, or Morningstar’s abilities, or dragging in some homeless prodigy from the street, I don’t care. I want it done and I want it quiet. Is that understood,_ Agent Lux?” 

_He placed emphasis on the name. Kyria was “Agent” and “Lux” because SHIELD needed to give her a history that didn’t involve body-possessing characters out of Sunday school. She had owned up to the name “Morningstar” exactly twice without excessive prodding since receiving proper SHIELD certification. Wyoming counted for the two because ending Azazel felt like an accomplishment and not a prod._

_But really, Agent Lux existed only because a cocky young archer had made a call his handler backed and the director hadn’t thrown out. And if said director demanded Morningstar make a reappearance to cover her own ass and that of SHIELD she couldn’t find a substantial reason to naysay him._

_“Understood, Director Fury.”_

_That didn’t mean she had to be happy about it._

***  


“What do you need to get it done?” she asked. “Fury’s already said anything goes and Morningstar _will_ help as needed.” 

That got a laugh out of Ash. “You’re the last resort. Or, actually, you can clean up whatever loose ends get missed. Help though – there’s this hacker I met on the net and she’s almost as good as me.” 

Kyria sighed and hung her head. Shaking it, she sighed again. “Sure. While removing all proof SHIELD has Ninjas, let’s hire another. Why not?” 

***

Aside from one small little wrinkle (“You’re the _Red Scare Hacker?!”)_ it was a surprisingly simple matter to transform the former Celeste Middleton into Charlotte Bradbury. The newly christened Charlie took remarkably well to working for a shadowy branch of a governmental agency that specialized in hunting all the things that went _bump_ in the night. 

“Kyria here is the Most Dangerous Ninja.” She winced at the capital in Ash’s title and wasn’t quick enough to stop him from continuing with, “Morningstar, you know. But don’t freak, ‘cause she’s cool, even if she is only half-human.” 

Between Ash and Charlie, any file with a sliver of relevance to NINJAT disappeared from SHIELD servers to be cordoned off in a special hard drive with Morningstar encryption. In other words, unless Kyria drew her interdimensional energy to the surface and directly interfaced with the device, or Ash or Charlie colluded with Coulson or Fury to access the information, it was as good as untranslatable. 

Fury was magnanimous enough to loan her Coulson for the herculean effort of smoothing over the wrinkles involved as money trails were forged and deleted by turns, personal files were rewritten, removed, or marked “deceased” as necessary, and all reports submitted by NINJAT assets or about NINJAT cases disappeared as if they had never been written. Bela (these days known as Agent Elizabeth Williams, personal assistant to Agent Lux) was drafted to handle the physical paperwork they needed to falsify. Aside from some snide remarks about SHIELD not trusting itself and several grumblings about the sheer volume of paperwork involved in disappearing a department (both of which were perfectly reasonable under the circumstances) “Beth” was rather helpful. 

Kyria would admit that “Beth” was a wonderful PA (she refused to be called a secretary). Admittedly because without the slight issue of the lingering crossroad deal, Kyria probably wouldn’t have a PA at all, and if Fury let her have one to make up for the burden of additional paperwork to cover-up her imminent lack of department, the agent (intern) in question would be . . . _distressed_ by the sorts of things Kyria had to deal with. (Just because there were anti-demons sigils under all the entranceways didn’t mean most SHIELD agents knew about them.) 

“Beth” also seemed to be enjoying her new life with SHIELD and was in no hurry to become dispensable. (It certainly didn’t hurt that without Kyria and SHIELD she would have been on close personal terms with friendly hellhounds and torture-happy demons.) Regardless, she had some experience in disappearing and aliases and had some useful suggestions, especially when dealing with removing all electronic and paper record of Morningstar coming to work for SHIELD, which was easily the trickiest bit of the entire enterprise. Officially, Barton had lost her in Barseback and no one had caught up to her since. 

Officially, Kyria Lux had caught Fury’s attention when she accidentally hacked his email. ( _“Really, Charlie?”_ ) She’d then been recruited (five weeks after Barseback) as Fury’s protégé. The Director barely batted an eye at the fabrication. Still, anyone with high enough clearance or a good enough hand at hacking would see through the cover that was to the secondary layer in place for instances of Kyria playing electric conductor. This encrypted data named Kyria as the daughter of an (unnamed/unknown) interdimensional energy being (alien) and _that_ was why Fury had taken personal interest in her. It wasn’t even a lie. Someone would need exceptionally high clearance to get anywhere near the cover story, but it was there in case it was needed. 

Further finagling hid the list of people Kyria had under surveillance and protection due to their supernatural connections and/or knowledge. Reams of carefully filled out papers supplied innocuous reasons for every dollar, every minute used by NINJAT. 

It was tricky, complex, ever-evolving work that Kyria knew with sinking certainty would detract from the already difficult work of determining angelic bloodlines, possible demonic hosts, potential not-wholly-human problems, and a whole host of other side projects she and Ash worked on when they had time. 

Ash was surprisingly pragmatic about that whole thing. “Hunters have been handling this stuff on their own for a long time before SHIELD got involved. We’ve accomplished a lot in terms of organizing and preparing them better. The network won’t collapse if we have to withdraw a tiny bit. Don’t underestimate our awesome skills, boss. We’ve got a great thing here and the way I see it, we’re protecting our people _and_ SHIELD by making this less of a target for the spy end of things.” 

When told of the change in coverage, Bobby was rather blunter. “Just ‘cause he’s paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, ya idjit.” 

Kyria couldn’t find it in herself to disagree.

**Author's Note:**

> This was not a direction I ever planned to go when I first thought up this series. But after CATWS and everything that followed, my brain cooked up various ways for NINJAT to have not part of the info-dump (or on HYDRA's radar) and I hit on this. And I realized this was an absolutely wonderful idea that totally fits with Fury and his not trusting people thing and why didn't I think of it sooner?
> 
> In my defense, NINJAT was never publicized within SHIELD. It was just _there_. But there was always a papertrail. (And now there isn't.)


End file.
